On p2, as Eric and Jen birth their marginalia relationship, Jen believes she has discovered the identity of Eric – Thomas Lyle Chadwick, PSU ID#3946608. By p5, however, Jen has investigated Chadwick further and discovered he is an undergrad in geology, which doesn’t line up with Eric’s story. Jen confronts Eric over this, and once Eric admits he allowed Jen to believe he was Chadwick, Jen gets upset and tells Eric to go to p10 for her response to this atrocity. And it is there that we find Jen’s response – a carefully drawn square with the thick borders in the upper left-hand corner. Eric struggles to understand her response, and we readers, like Eric, are left without a definitive answer.

What you will find here is also not a definitive answer, but a list of observations about the conversation leading up to and about this square that seem to carry a few common themes: nothing and three.

Nothing

On the page where Jen “discovers” that Eric is Thomas Chadwick (p2), the page is blank. There is no print from the book. Just to the right of that, we are introduced to “S” – a man with no identity.

After Jen confronts Eric, she stops writing in the book for awhile. On p5 Eric says, It’s really disappointing to pick up the book and find nothing from you.

Jen tell’s Eric about the square on p5 by saying, Dear Mr. Not Chadwick, see p10 for my response.

When Jen finally does respond to Eric, she asks Aren’t you a student? Eric responds with I was. I got “expunged” in January. To be expunged is to be made nothing – erased completely from existence.

V.M. Straka’s third book is entitled The Square. It is first mentioned in Ship of Theseus on p70, where the main character Franzl is described by FXC in Fn1 as a man with no possessions. The last word in the text on p70 is nonetheless.

Eric’s pencilled marginalia refers to The Square on p75 and below that, bottom left, Jen says about a code she is trying to track that I’m getting nowhere with this.

Three (admittedly, this applies more to Straka’s book The Square than specifically to Jen’s drawing)

The Square is the third book in V.M. Straka’s bibliography of nineteen works.

On p75, when Eric mentions in pencil that a line has been taken verbatim from The Square, we are first introduced to the Zapadi Three.

The only footnote on p75 discusses three possible products manufactured at the factory where Vaclav Straka worked.

Eric highlights a section on p88 that these details were drawn from the square (a pun on a drawing of a square?) Within that section a clock strikes three separate hours: twelve, one, and two. The next hour, implied, is of course, three.

Again on p88, Pfeifer challenges the police with three men are missing! Probably dead! Why don’t you do your jobs and investigate? These three sentences are italicized in the book.

Again on p88, we are reminded that three men are walking along (Pfeifer, Ostrero, and S).

Again on p88, Jen underlines three words in a row for emphasis: I don’t need.

On p95, Eric notes in pencil that a scene in Ship of Theseus mirrors one in The Square. He also notes three pages from The Square and writes Three different views of the same gesture.

Again on p95, Jen underlines three words in a row for emphasis: special collections archive.

Again on p95, S spots Sola. S notes she is square-shouldered and while struggling to believe she could possibly be here thinks to himself Concidence be damned.

The entire scene that concerns the protest over The Zapadi Three takes place itself in a square (see p86) and closely mimics the central event in Straka’s book The Square over what happened in Haymarket Square in Chicago on May 4, 1886.

What do you see when it comes to these, or even other, themes surrounding Jen’s blue square? If you need some ideas, here is another blog post about how truth may be connected to Jen’s blue square. Share your thoughts in the comments below.

If you haven’t already, read this older post called Is S on a Fugue Walkabout? The post below is a sequel to it and reveals more about the song lines discussed there.

First, let’s walk through the following references that reveal a consistent juxtaposition of two things: the earth/world and letters/words/sounds/writing.

The first words of the book of the Foreword say WHO WAS V.M. STRAKA?The world knows his name.

The last page of the book contains the EOTVOS wheel, where different series of letters are associated with geographic coordinates around the world.

Page x in the Foreword: I saw the world through the eyes of his characters.

Twice in the Foreword on xiii, FXC uses the phrase mundanely literal (Fn11). Mundane meansworld. Literal means of or belonging to letters or writing.

On page xiii of the Foreword: If his remains are in the ground anywhere, they have become part of the earth in its entirety.

Translator’s Note and Foreword: Is this a pun? Translate means to relocate – to move from one place to another – like moving around the world. Note could mean a musical note. Foreword could be a pun on forward. Does Translator’s Note and Forward mean, literally, Musical Movement Forward Around the World?

The orlop is a key place on S’s ship where mysterious writing takes place when you are part o’ the tradition. Orlop means, literally, overloop. Letters/words/stories being written in the overloop by the crew and eventually S himself as the ship loops its way around the world.

S. returns to the world, to the literal space of the secret room on the orlop deck (p297).

The cave in the Chapter Down and Out has the story of the K__ people told in images/writing painted onto the earth itself.

In the petroglyphs of The Territory – the symbol S was carved into the earth (p350). Anca says that these petroglyphs are our stories. Who we are and why we are here (p344). S is a story written into the earth.

Regarding The Tradition: For the first time, he understands the tradition,or at least recognizes the most essential of its constituent parts. The stories that move outside time—that divert, oppose, resist. His life of words, of pictures and sounds that contemplate what the world is or could be. (p404-405)

In the climax – S kneels down and touches the earth and all the voices in his head go silent. Settled. Voices and narratives, reabsorbed into the ground on which we walk. And this is the key, he realizes, the thing that makes the purpose of all that work on the ship… and in all of the places he’s visited …worthwhile.

There was a key in Zepadi’s window box, where earth/ground would have been present to help the flowers grow there (p109). The window above that box had two S-symbols etched into the scrollwork of the shutters (pp130-131).

Second, with all of this in mind about the earth, let’s remember that in the climax of the story of Eric Husch and Jennifer Heyward, our two friends are in the PSU planetarium when Moody apparently cuts the power to the projector and attacks Eric during some sort of important demonstration. Eric hits back and Moody likely flees into the steam tunnels. Jen comments that Serin may have had people there (p453). Eric and Jen then leave almost immediately for Prague – home to one of the world’s oldest and most famous astronomical clocks. Why would the planetarium be a location for the climax of a story about Eric and Jen’s search to discover the identity of Straka – and of S? And why on earth would Serin be there – unless the answer had something to do with planets? The earth? With that in mind, consider these references…

Arquimedes de Sobreiro is a sailor who travelled around the world on a ship – perhaps S’s ship. And his arrows fly around the world and land at his feet (p381). The author of The Archer’s Tales has two references to going around the world – sailing and arrows flying. Archimedes of Syracuse is known for creating the world’s first planetarium.

The barrel organ in Chapter 1, where we first meet the monkey, is a device that creates music when the organ grinder (root word ground) rotates it around a central axis. Highlighted portions of the drum translate into notes that play music as the drum is rotated.

The climactic story of the people who attend Vevoda’s gala in Chapter 10 revolves around Edvar Vevoda VI: He is the planet at the center of the gala, the axis around which the party whirls and time passes (p410).

The Chapter 10 cipher solution uses the EOTVOS wheel and locations around the world to translate letters on the wheel into a message.

As “the music plays” in the interlude Tocatta and Fugue in Real Time, S sails around the world poisoning people (p359). It’s as if we are to understand that S’s travels around the world are musical in some way.

Cruzatte (the name of the park where Jen wandered away from her parents when she was young) is certainly named after the fiddle player who accompanied Lewis and Clark as they traveled around their world of North America in search of a water route to the Pacific Ocean. The Territory, as S climbs the monkey path up to meet the Governor, is compared to Cruzatte on p351 by Jen. On that path that S travels, he catalogs many sounds, including a monkey and several birds: a Merlin (Stenfalk), a crow (Corbeau), an oystercatcher (Ostrero), and a magpie (S).

Birds sing – often as they fly – leaving a different note hanging in the air in different locations as they traverse the earth.

V.M. Straka’ S obituary, as it appears in the Baltimore Bugle-Dispatch on June 14, 1946, has an article whose headline has all but been covered up. Careful analysis reveals, however, that it is an early article suggesting that one day the earth could be orbited by hundreds of tiny moons – or satellites.

Calais (it all goes back to Calais) is the birthplace of the worldwide wired telegraph – where the first undersea cable connected two countries. From then on, letters/words/messages could be communicated across the earth. Literally, letters travelled around the globe.

So what does all this mean? Two last things to consider before we put it all together…

Bach, in The Art of the Fugue, left an obviously incomplete piece with his own name encoded musically in the final four notes. Written in the margins of this piece is a note by one of Bach’s son claiming that the author died while writing the piece. All of this sounds hauntingly familiar to V.M. Straka’s unfinished tenth chapter of Ship of Theseus, and his untimely death while trying to compete it while we try to determine his name. Did he also encode his name/identity in the name of S? What makes this even more interesting is that the latest theory concerning BACH’s mysterious piece is that he did not die while writing that piece, but instead deliberately presented this piece as an enigma that ultimately points to The Harmony of the Spheres – a philosophical and spiritual belief that the planets create a form of music as they dance around the sun.

Doug Dorst once tweeted a clue – it was nothing more than the image of fingers forming a chord on a guitar. That chord turned out to be A-flat diminished, often written as AbDIM.This turns out to be the name Abdim, musically encoded. Abdim is the character in Ship of Theseus that handed S the valise (p244-245).

Bach’s name was musically encoded in an unfinished manuscript that he is thought to have died while writing – a remarkable parallel to Straka. And a character in Straka’s novel is also musically encoded in a guitar chord by the meta-author, Doug Dorst.

Is Dorst just having a bit of fun with us or is our meta-author giving us a meta-clue?

Here is the theory.

S’s name is encoded musically within Ship of Theseus.

The letters/characters of his name are musical notes represented by locations on earth.

The musical staff is created by the lines of latitude.

The musical notes are determined by the differences in longitude.

The earth, in essence, is like a barrel organ. As it rotates, different points on the earth indicate the sound to be played in order to hear the music. The earth becomes a musical instrument revealing and promoting harmony on our own sphere.

The locations themselves are the yet undiscovered locations of B__, G__, El H__, P__ (Prague), The Territory, and perhaps other known/unknown locations, that S navigates on his journey.

The first location is Calais, France. Because It all goes back to Calais.

If we listen closely, perhaps we can hear the music and discover the song line that reveals the name of S and the identity of both he and V. M. Straka.

Between pages 20-21 there is an insert provided by Jennifer Heyward to Eric Husch that proves, for the first time known to anyone in modern history, that The Archer’s Tales was a book that actually existed. Until then, as Eric stated, no evidence existed to suggest that The Archer’s Tales, or Sobreiro, were anything other than figments of V. M. Straka’s imagination.

The Archer’s Tales (Los Cuentos del Arquero) was known interchangeably as The Book of S (El Libro de S). It was destroyed in a fire at a Spanish abbey known as San Tadeo de la Tejera in 1759. The abbey was located somewhere near Bilbao, Spain on the northern coast. There were 19 monks at the abbey at the time of the fire, and all but one perished. The brother who survived managed to save and transport a sack of books to the Santiago Cathedral in Bilbao, but he was unable to save The Archer’s Tales.

The name San Tadeo de la Tejera means, literally, Saint Heart of the Yew Tree (tadeo = heart, tejera = yew tree). The yew tree has a perfect wood for creating longbows for archery. It is also prized for use in the construction of musical instruments, such as the lute.

One of the only two accounts of this story of the abbey, its fire, and the copy of The Archer’s Tales include Captain Norbert Strunk of the whaler ship known as The Imperia. In Ship of Theseus, Sola is traveling on a liner called The Imperia. The other account is from Sister Ulrike Stoecklin of Winterthur, whose name means literally Prosperous and Powerful Tree Stump (Ulrike = prosperity and power, Stoecklin = tree stump).

“The Burning Word: The 1759 Fire that Destroyed San Tadeo de la Tejera and one of History’s Most Curious Libraries” by D. W. MacCarrach, Ph.D., University of Prestwick

of the brothers were skilled record-keepers, and so we must depend on Azarola’s account, flawed though it may be, to infer many of the titles that are not explicitly accounted for in Brother Ruben’s inventory.1

The volumes most frequently mentioned in the correspondence of visitors to the abbey are two illuminated works: the Lives of the Saints by Emiliano of Zaragoza (early 15th century); and a volume that Father Leopold Jäger referred to as the Albufeira Bible by Eustaquio of Sagres (early 16th century). Both are hailed as astonishing works of artistic vision and meticiulous craft. A compilation of the library’s extensive collection of psalters appears in Appendix F, breviaries in Appending G, and hymnals in Appendix H.

Several of the travelers who wrote the most extensively about San Tadeo, including Azarola, were as unnerved by the atmosphere of the abbey and the behavior of the monks as they were by the size of the collection and the beauty of many individual volumes. The monks were not a silent order, but they communicated to each other only in guttural whispers that were unintelligible to outsiders. The building was unfinished, with several passageways ending suddenly, sending inattentive walkers falling fifty feet to the rocky ground. Azarola complained about an inordinate number of birds nesting throughout the abbey, including in the kitchens and in the cells where travelers took their rest. Igorko of Bratislava wrote in his journal the he scarcely could believe the abbey existed, even though he had just passed a month within its walls.2

—1. History owns a tremendous debt of gratitude to the unidentifiable young novice who survived the blaze and walked barefoot all the way to Santiago Cathedral in Bilbao whilst toting a sack full of books he had saved from the flames. At the cathedral, he spoke with a priest, Father Ulises, who had been at work scrubbing the stone floors. All we know of the novice comes from Father Ulise’s account: the young man lamented the loss of the other eighteen brothers, but he was utterly inconsolable at having failed to preserve a particular tome, an extensive compendium of fantastic, revelatory, subversive, bawdy, and chilling tales gathered by a mythic archer in his travels across the world. (The title of the book is unclear – Father Ulise’s refers to it once as El Libro de S (“The Book of S”) and once as Los Cuentos deal Arquero (“Tales of the Archer”). As a forbidden secular text, it would not have appeared in the abbey’s written records.) The novice left the sack of books in Father Ulise’s care, accepted water and a half-loaf of bread, and continued on with his travels, of which nothing is known. It is worth noting that we have only third-hand accounts of this exchange between the two religious men, but those sources – Sister Ulrike Stoecklin of Winterthur and Capt. Norbert Strunk of the American whaler Imperia – are not, on the whole, considered unreliable.

2. Igorko’s statement was prescient, in a way. My study of official records in the area and my informal interviews of local residents suggest that hardly anyone believes the abbey ever existed.

These are the final known words written by Jennifer Heyward and Eric Husch in their copy of Ship of Theseus by V.M. Straka.

This begs the question why do we have their copy?

NO WAY I’M EVER LETTING GO OF THIS BOOK.

Eric pronounces these words seriously to Jen in the margins of p76. But if we are to play the role of the reader who stumbles onto their copy of the book and its precious contents, how is it that Eric ever did actually let it go?

Someone pointed out to me once that the last words of the marginalia are crossed out, and that might be an ominous sign. After Eric writes OK, someone crosses that word out. Are Eric & Jen not OK any more?

On pp85-86, we find Desjardins’ cryptic letter to Eric that came In a package that also included documents (none of which we have access to) and an obsidian piece. Eric is excited about the obsidian piece, but Jen cautions him that it probably should be in one of the Straka Archives around he world – most likely Paris. Eric responds…

HELLO RAIN. I SEE YOU’VE MET MY PARADE.

I’m On p86, Eric and Jen shift the conversation…

I could put one dot on any page of this book and you’d notice it.

LIKE ON P. 319

Indeed there is a red dot on p319. To the left and below that dot, on p318, we see that Jen mentions she has to write a worthless paper on “Rain” – the poem by William Carlos Williams (see p232 marginalia for confirmation of WCW’s version of “Rain.”)

Rain is mentioned in both locations. Perhaps it is simply atmospheric. Perhaps there is a different reason Jen placed the red dot on p319 and mentioned it on p86 to see if Eric could find it. Or perhaps we are being subtly drawn to the idea of water falling.

My friend Mike, aka @anabramsfan, pointed out to me that in Jen’s screenshot of the VMS ending to Ship of Theseus, there was a window opened behind that one and you could see some text and what looked like a photograph. He also pointed out you could see the cover of The Winged Shoes of Emydio Alves. You can only see thin slivers of these things, but he was right – something was definitely there.

Here is the first screenshot. Notice on the right that you can see a large vertical slice of the cover of The Winged Shows of Emydio Alves. The slice on the left is very thin, and you can only see a few letters. Not much to give you a clue as to what you are looking at.

In the third screenshot, however, the top window shifts, reducing the amount we see of Winged Shoes and giving as a much larger slice of the left side of the window underneath.

Study it carefully. There is text – white letters on a dark background – for the top 2/3 of our slice. Then there is what Mike pointed out looks like some sort of photograph. Then below the photograph, a little more text.

Now take a look at this screenshot, taken from the website EOTVOSWHEEL.com. Compare it to the vertical slice in the screenshot above. You will see that in the jenheyward tumblr blog screenshot, the visible portion of the photograph includes the lower back of the monkey and the podium on which he sits. You can also see the beginning of the word illness below the photograph,which corresponds to the EOTVOSWHEEL.com site as well.

So what we see is that Jen Heyward has a window open on her computer to EOTVOSWHEEL.COM as she is creating the screenshots to reveal the VMS ending to Ship of Theseus.

Ah, but is she just looking at the website or is there something more?

Take a look at the first screenshot again. Zoom in to the top right corner, which shows a portion of the toolbar above the cover of Winged Shoes. You will see an icon for MAC software that typically means, if I am not mistaken, edit or format.

It does not appear that Jen Heyward is viewing the EOTVOSWHEEL.com website. It appears that she is creating it – or at least editing it.

Did Jen and Eric make up the name J.W. Dominguez as an alias in order to post theories about V.M. Straka without having their own identities compromised? Does J.W. stand for Jen Heyward?

As Mike pointed out, the home page has a post that was erased [REDACTED] due to “cease and desist” orders. Mike suggests maybe Moody/Ilsa are the reason for this.

Another reason that Eric/Jen might be behind EOTVOSWHEEL.COM is this: further down the tumblr blog is this photograph…

Notice that Jen has, in the background of her photograph on the top right, a contact sheet of the four Havana photographs. They don’t just have single, printed copies from the website. They have either the original, or a copy, of the actual contact sheet from the negatives. But as we have seen, the Havana photographs are fake. Does this mean that Eric/Jen faked them and posted them on EOTVOSWHEEL.COM?

Also, on the left-hand side of the obituary is handwriting. You can see the name J.W. Dominguez and Eotvoswheel.com. Above both of those you can also see “Juri Mol” – a name which is cut off before we see the remainder. Is this Juri Moller, whose Pinterest page appears to be the Danish guy posting pictures of the S symbol as he finds them throughout the world – referred to in the marginalia of S?

Standefer Hall will be closed for the first week of the semester due to extensive flooding on the two lower floors, which occurred during the winter break. The flooding was apparently caused by vandalism to water fixtures and pipes throughout the building.

“We suspect that a heavy, blunt instrument was used,” said PSU police lieutenant Tommy Crompton. “Like a sledgehammer, maybe, or a cinder block or brick or that sort of heavy instrument. We have not found this instrument in or near the building and suspect that the perpetrator carried it away with him [sic] or her person.”

Floors, walls, office furniture and electrical equipment, including computers, suffered the most extensive water damage. Books, file cabinets, and stacks of paper were also ruined. Most severely affected were graduate students in English, who share space in offices on the ground floor. “This sucks,” said fourth-year Ph.D. student Max Funderburke. “I lost like six months’ worth of work.” Ilsa Dirks, a third-year Ph.D. student, complained that the blue books from her students’ final exams last semester had been “turned to pulp.”

According to Lt. Compton, the vandal likely had a key to the building, as there were no signs of forced entry. No alarms were triggered. Video surveillance in the building has been nonoperational for several months, he said, due to a dispute with a contractor, but will come back on line soon. Damages were worsened by the fact that the flood went unreported for nearly 24 hours, owing to reduced campus security patrols due to the provost’s budget cuts. While there were some signs of “tagging,” police do not suspect gang activity or any of the university’s fraternities.

English professor T. Wright Moody told the Pronghorn, “this is the action of someone who has no respect for the university’s mission, for learning, or for scholarly research and no regard for others who are engaged in such activities. It is a sophomoric act of destruction, the product of an unenlightened, and perhaps even diseased, mind.”

PSU Provost Fern Ruck sought to assure the university community that the water damage will be fully repaired within the week and that they should not fear any health risks from mold or other residual effects of the flooding. “The cold weather kept many things from growing,” she said.

Any students or staff with information leading to the crime should contact Lt. Compton at extension 8-2351.

Classes scheduled to meet in Standefer have been relocated to other buildings around campus. A list of these changes appears on page 9 of this issue. Professors will be occupying temporary office space in Mahaffey Hall and in the basement of the Agriculture Building, both on the south side of the Quad.

THE PHILOSOPHY Department welcomes Professor Marvin M. Wenke of Stennett University, who will spend this semester at PSU as the Sumbridge Distinguished Visiting Professor of Humanities. Prof. Wenke won the prestigious 2011 MacInnes Philosophy Prize for his book Are You a Torus? Shapes of Self, in which he argued that personal identity is best understood as a construct of geometry rather than language. “My work is both groundbreaking and foundational,” he told the Daily Pronghorn in an email. “There’s simply nothing that can accurately be said or written about who one ‘is.’ We are shapes, pure and simple – polytopes, curves, and surfaces, etc., etc. Really, a child could understand this.”

Prof. Wenke will teach PHIL 183 (Modalities of Self). He will also give three lectures that will be open to the general public.

Between pages 274-277, S. describes four separate dreams he has of Sola in one night. Though the dreams are very different, they all have a common theme.

Swimming in a Mountain Lake

He is swimming in a mountain lake, and she is waiting for him on the far bank. They are at high elevation: the flora consists solely of twisted krummholz formations, and the moon, fat and gold, takes up an eighth of the night sky. He strokes and kicks through ink-dark water but gets no closer to her. She waves, calls out something that might be hisname, and he strokes faster, kicks harder, but getsno closer—he might even be drifting backward—and this is when he feels tiny punctures breaking the skin of his belly, thighs, feet, and legs as leechesbegin feeding on him, and the dread that grips him has nothing to do with losing blood or realizinghe has become some other creature’s prey but rather has to do with fear of what he will look like to herwhen he gets out of the water, and he wonders whether perhaps it isn’t better to drown—

The krummholz symbolizes S’s crooked hand as he attempts to write in his room on the ship. The lake and its “ink-dark water” represent his attempt to write, but he is getting nowhere. His muse, Sola, is far away, and he cannot seem to reach her.

The Entrance to the Orlop Deck

She is waiting for him in the passage to the orlop deck. He cannot tell whether she is barring him from entering or beckoning him to come with her; she stands perfectly still, and her face, backlit, is unreadable. For no reason that he understands, he opens his mouth and screams. Is it a scream of anguish? of frustration? of fear? Strangely, he cannot tell. Whatever its source or purpose, it surprises him in the dream and jolts him awake in the hammock, which swings violently.

The entrance to the orlop, where the crew is free to write on ink and paper, signifies S’s longing to write freely himself. Sola, his muse, is the doorway to writing freely. Once he stands directly before her, he is terrified of what happens next.

On a Roof Amid a Cluster of Old Pigeon Coops

He is on a roof amid a cluster of old pigeon coops. A bird arrives, a message tied to its leg withblack thread. S. intuits that the message is from her and that it has come over a great distance, but whenhe unrolls the thin paper, he can make no sense ofthe shapes that are inked on it. They are words, heknows—and they are her words—but the alexia thathas stricken him is total. He needs to send a responseto her, needs desperately to have some words pass between them, and he puts pen to paper, rolls it uparound the bird’s tiny, hollow-boned leg, and knots the thread. It isn’t until after he releases his messenger to the gray skies that he realizes he forgot tomake a single mark on the page. The bird disappears into an anvil cloud, and S. waits and waits forit to emerge, but the bird never does.

Carrier pigeons carry the written word from one person to another. They connect people with words. Sola, his muse, is calling to him, but S is not able to understand what she says. He tries himself to write, but fails. This is his biggest fear: of failing to write what he wants to write and connect with his muse, Sola.

On a Giant Sofa in Front of Sets of False Teeth

He and Sola are in an enormous, echoing room of stone walls and floors; of burgundy and gold rugs, arrases, drapes; of furniture scaled for impossibly large people. They sit, pressed tightly shoulder-to-shoulder, at the center of a sofa, the distant armrests of which rise above eye-level. Before them, on a table with swirls of gold inlays that induce a mild vertigo, are dozens of sets of false teeth, each contraption more complicated than the last, some of them so ghastly that it chills him to imagine how they might be made to fit into a mouth. Sola turns and opens her mouth as if to speak, revealing a space of uninterrupted pink. S. runs his tongue over his own gums, finds himself toothless as well. The dream-imperative is clear—they must both try on sets of teeth until they find ones that fit—but they sit, unmoving, because neither will risk looking monstrous to the other, and this dream goes on for what feels like forever (O, fickle and variable Time!), ballooning impossibly as they sit there, sit there, sit there, ever in silent anxiety, toothless and still, waiting for something to change—

This dream ties the other three together with the same theme, but leveraging a more intense objective correlative. Here S. finally sits with his muse, Sola, side by side. But they are in a room for bigger, richer people. In S’s eyes, he is too small and too poor to be significant in this room. The dream imperative – to try on sets of false teeth – represents S’s feeling that he must conform to some pre-designed, uncomfortable, unnatural method of communication before he can get out of this prison. He is afraid of doing so because of how he will look to his muse – Sola. In this dream, even his muse is in the same situation as himself.

The Common Thread

S. has these dreams in his room on the ship. In his dreams, Sola represents S’s muse.

It is remarkable: for so long, he tried and failed to summon her when he was in this room, and now here she is, the muse as her physical self. (p412-413)

S. repeatedly tries to connect with her through writing, but fails. He begins with a tortured form of writing – using a nail or fish hook and scratching his words into wood. Even then, those words don’t come out as he intends. Later, he begins to write freely in the orlop, though his words don’t connect well.

When S. is on the orlop, with the pen’s nib flying over paper, with ink spattering over skin, fabric, wood, what emerges on the paper are flashes of image, lightning-strikes of sense-memories, fragmented impressions of events. They refuse to be strung into coherent, linear narrative no matter how consciously he tries to arrange them so; in fact, the more he tries, the more the pieces resist his efforts. (p309)

Finally, when S. and Sola connect and are physically together on the ship, S. begins to transition from this disconnected writing to something much different. On p407-408, we see that S. finds his muse completely, so much so that he spends the end of Chapter 9 writing the beginning of Chapter 10.

S. wants to be a writer, but he is afraid that he can’t. That he won’t. That he never will be. He is swimming in ink without actually moving. He is standing before the orlop without actually entering. He sends a carrier pigeon away with no message. He is too small and insignificant in the room of those “real writers,” too unwilling to become something he is not, and so nothing ever changes.

And yet, S. is fully capable of becoming a writer – a great writer. He needs only to let his muse find him. Connect with him. Lead him. Be with him. Help him face his greatest enemy face to face.

Conclusion

The dreams seem to represent the fears of all would-be authors. We fear what we will look like to others. We think we do not have what it takes. The ability. The talent. We are terrified of what we will look like if we actually try. The words don’t come out as we intend. We feel so small and meaningless, and think that to change that feeling we must pretend to be something we are not.

And yet the truth is, we can all write. We all have a story to tell. We just have to be ourselves.

If S. can be a book made up of the raw writings between two young people struggling to find themselves, and Ship of Theseus can be a controversial book of mingled conversations enciphered and interlaced together between FXC and VMS, then our own writings can connect with others, too. Just put pen to paper. Fingers to keyboard. And write without trying to be anyone other than your true self.

A playfair cipher along with a sealed envelope that contains instructions for solving the cipher.

The Letter from J. W. Dominguez

Dear book club,

Thank you for selecting S. for your reading group. This unique web of narratives is best experienced in the company of other readers. Moreover, I’ve devoted many years to trying to uncover the identity of V.M. Straka, and the more people we have investigating it, the better. To that end, I’ve included materials that will also help you solve the many ciphers in S. and discover the elements within and outside the book, bringing S. more deeply to life.

Let me tell you what’s inside this kit. You have received a dossier I assembled of possible Straka candidates. You have also received instructions for solving a Playfair cipher, which will come in handy as you read Ship of Theseus. A CD contains the first transmission from Radio Straka, which appeared on radiostraka.com this past fall. Two erasable colored pencils have been included so you can add your notes and observations to Jen and Eric’s. And finally, we encourage you to write and mail a postcard to Straka’s translator, F. X. Caldeira. We’re collecting these correspondences in our New York Office and posting them online at mulhollandbooks.com/s-bookclub.

I’ve never gotten a straight answer about how Mulholland got hold of Jen and Eric’s annoyed copy of Ship of Theseus, but I’m glad they did. It’s been a tremendous boon to Straka scholarship. I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I have.

If you have not already, head on over to RadioStraka.com and listen to the excellent transmissions of another seeker to the solution of the Straka mystery.

Two Erasable Colored Pencils (20045 Carmine Red and 20067 Purple)

@MJHasOwlEyes points out that the colored pencils appear to be unique for each Book Club Kit.

The Postcard from The Botanical Gardens of Rio De Janeiro (Jardim Botanico)

This is an interesting choice of postcard to be included. What is the significance of the Botanical Gardens in Rio de Janeiro? This pond just happens to be a few hundred feet away from the picture on the postcard insert in Ship of Theseus between p190-191. Though the place name has been removed, that insert pictures the entrance to the Botanical Gardens of Rio de Janeiro. This garden stands in the shadow of the Christ the Redeemer statue.

The Playfair Cipher

I don’t want to spoil it, so enjoy. You can easily find the solution online, but why not try your hand at solving it yourself? The marginalia between Jen and Eric should be enough to help you figure it out.

Couldn’t it just as easily be Straka taking something that was happening out in the real world and using it in a story? EOTVOSWHEEL.COM

In the “real world” of Eric Husch and Jennifer Heyward, there are events that occur that have an eery counterpart within Ship of Theseus. The Santorini Man murders are the most obvious. Each of these involves the mysterious deaths of unidentifiable individuals who have torn pages of one of Straka’s books in their pockets.

However, there are more clues within the margins of Ship of Theseus itself that range from the plain to the subtle. Below is a list that will probably grow as others point them out.

The Phrygian Tumble of Notes that Means Land Ho! (p307)
FXC claims that VMS agonized over whether to make the musical mode of Maelstrom’s tumble of notes that announce land ho Phrygian, Mixolydian, Locrian, or Dorian. She insists that he changed it back to Phrygian just in time for printing. The book was not published until October, 1949. Strika “died” in June, 1946. So either way, FXC is lying.

S’s Assassination of Agent #2 – 1937 or later (p329-330)Fort Point lies directly beneath an arch of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Eric and Jen write in the margins…

THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED – THE SF CORONER WROTE A MEMOIR & MENTIONS THIS AS ONE OF THE UNSOLVED MURDERS THAT HAUNTED HIM. I MEAN THE DETAILS (RE: CAR & PAGE) ARE RIGHT ON – EVEN THOUGH THEY WEREN’T IN ANY OF THE NEWSPAPER ACCOUNTS AND THE MEMOIR WASN’T PUBLISHED UNTIL THE LATE 50’S.So you think Straka’s confessing?WELL, HE COULD HAVE FOUND OUT ABOUT IT IF HE KNEW SOMEONE IN THE POLICE DEPARTMENT, OR EVEN THE CORONER HIMSELF – BUT I THINK IT SOUNDS LIKE HE WAS THERE.I didn’t think so before. Now I do.

Do we know that Bouchard had a son?WE DON’T KNOW. BUT WHEN USSR FELL & MANY KREMLIN DOCS RELEASED, THERE WAS ONE FROM 1957 ABOUT MANAGING THE “COMERCANTS B.” TRANSITION (SEE DESJARDINS 1986). HAVE HEARD THERE’S A SIMILAR DOC IN EISENHOWER’S ARCHIVES, WHICH IS INTERESTING – BOTH SIDES WORRYING ABOUT BOUCHARD CONTINUITY.

This reveals that the two primary superpowers on earth are concerned about whether or not Bouchard’s armaments will still be on the market. Why would they be concerned? Because something happened…

The Chateau and the Map (p402-403) As S. and Sola arrive at the Chateau, they meet a group of secret rebels who want to assist in Vevoda’s destruction. It is here that they learn that the map to the Chateau was provided by a woman who risked – and lost – her life. She was drowned in wine. Jen says in the margins…

Newspaper in Marseille reported this: 3/19/48. It happened.ANOTHER PART OF A CONFESSION? OR JUST FOLLOWING THROUGH W/S’s STORYLINE?

This presents us with a quandary. According to FXC, VMS died on June 5 or 6, 1946, in Havana Cuba. And though we already know that Chapter 10’s authorship is in question, this particular passage is in Chapter 9. And the “real world” event happened almost two years after Straka’s supposed death. Was V.M. Straka still alive in 1948? And if he was, who was the real-world Vevoda counterpart that drowned the woman in wine? The answer lies in the marginalia written around the map on p402…

NOT IN THE ORIGINAL MS. MAYBE HE DIDN’T BOTHER TO DRAW IT? SOMEONE ELSE WOULD?Or Filomela put it in. That would be so bad-ass: putting a map to Bouchard’s estate in the goddamn book. She’s my idol. I ASKED HER. SHE SMILED. SHE SAID SHE DIDN’T KNOW FOR SURE THAT THE MAP WAS CORRECT, BUT YOU COULD TELL SHE WAS REALLY PROUD SHE’D DONE IT.Checked satellite maps. Doesn’t look like there’s anything there now.BUT PLACES CAN BE OBSCURED FROM SATELLITE MAPS. SOUNDS LIKE GARDEN-VARIETY CONSPIRACY-THEORY FOR SURE, BUT STILL…We should go. Look for ourselves. It’s not that far away. Maybe a day by train! Less?

What if Straka’s “death” in 1946 corresponds to the end of Chapter 8 (The Territory) where everything seems lost and S. is “a ghost”? What if V.M. Straka then entered into some version of The Winter City where no one (including himself) knew where he was? And what if he reemerged and went to the Bouchard Estate with the intent of destroying his lifelong nemesis? And what if the real Chapter 10 controversy ultimately reveals what Straka actually did and what became of him? This would imply that FXC is not telling the whole story, because she wouldn’t have had the full manuscript until after these events unfolded between March, 1948 and October 31, 1949 (the publication date of Ship of Theseus). Remember, Straka “died” in the San Sebastian hotel. Saint Sebastian was martyred once at the orders of Diocletian – shot with arrows until he was most certainly dead (The Archer’s Tales!). He survived, however, and lived for a time until he confronted Diocletian in person. He was then martyred “again.” Is this enough evidence that V.M. Straka did not die in Havana? You decide.

Today, @EricHusch appears to have met with what he originally thought was a member of SERIN. He relayed the entire story to @JenTheUndergrad. The meeting took place at 1900 hours (7pm ET) at the Flushing Meadows – Corona Park in Queens, NY, on the 75th anniversary of the World’s Fair in NYC. The person that Eric met with…

Carried an old valise

Had a copy Compendium of Birds by P.T. Russell

Gave a new, yet-to-be-revealed alternative ending to Chapter 10 of Ship of Theseus to join the others (v.288)

Had an apparent copy of The Archer’s Tales, with a look promised to Eric if he could help identify Straka’s real ending

Indicated he knew Jen and threatened them both to cease contact with SERIN and Crinitus – reminding Eric of the torn page in his pocket from April 28

——-

ORIGINAL POST

The normally quiet and otherwise innocuous twitter accounts of @EricHusch and @JenTheUndergrad erupted this past week with a —conversation indicating the Eric received more money from SERIN and a single round-trip ticket to NYC for next Monday, April 28. It looks like something may be happening. Given the recent clues about the valise stolen from FXC at Grand Central Terminal prior to 1949, it could be that we get a peek inside!

In addition, many S. bloggers (myself not included), recently received a MulHolland Books “S. Reading Group Kit.” You can see the contents for those who posted them here (if I missed links to your kit let me know)…

Surely it is no coincidence that the press kits pointing to the 1939 World’s Fair in NYC, the 75th anniversary next week, and Eric Husch’s trip to NYC next week all occur so close together?

To make it even more interesting, the fairgrounds were built on the site of a vast ash dump. If Eric does go there next week on the anniversary, it would be an Ash Wednesday of sorts. 🙂

—

UPDATE

It appears that Eric has arrived in NYC today – April 28. Someone put a crumpled page from Ship of Theseus in his pocket at the airport (p155-156) with a single set of margin notes…

Flushing Meadows
19:00
30th

This seems to indicate that Eric is to meet with someone (SERIN?) in the park at 7pm ET Wednesday, April 30th.

April 29 was an oddly uneventful day. No meetings with SERIN. Eric checked in with Jen via twitter since his phone is apparently unable to call Prague. He checked in from Grand Central, the New York Public Library, Bryant Park (next to the library), Washington Square Park, and Little Italy. Not sure if this is a way to kill time or walk us through Straka-related items? Washington Square Park is right next to Washington & Greene Streets – a nod to the titular 11th book by V.M. Straka. Is it also a reference to The Square (Straka’s 3rd book?) His trip to Grand Central could refer to The Winged Shoes of Emydio Alves since the GCT has a statue of Mercury on top. The library? Maybe this hearkens back to Doug Dorst’s tweet that the answers we seek may be found at the library.

Tomorrow seems to be the big day – but not until 7pm ET (1900 hours). What will Eric be doing until then? What will happen at the meeting in Flushing Meadows?

Marginalia
A discussion of art vs. commerce. Eric comments that “VMS thought art returned something, too, & commerce just extracted – no matter what it purported to give back.” Jen asks where love fits in. Eric and Jen discuss the missing obsidian pieces from the archives and whether Desjardins piece sent to Eric was stolen from the Paris archives.

76

Ship of TheseusS. sees Corbeau for the first time as he approaches the striking worker’s at Vevoda’s factory.

MarginaliaJen flirts, comparing Corbeau and Stenfalk’s affection in such a strange context to perhaps their own. Eric does not answer the first time through. Jen talks about Eric’s older margin notes and they call their project a scrapbook.

95

Ship of TheseusS. spots Sola for the second time in the crowd on the wharf. S. senses the policemen are aware of his presence. S. thinks the anger between the two groups is about to ignite.

Marginalia
Jen is angry at her friends, but Eric calms her. Eric’s older pencil notes point at the policeman gripping his cudgel and points back to The Square (p63, 101, 119). There is talk of Ilsa wearing an obsidian piece. More talk about the archives.

114

Ship of TheseusS. has just announced to his newfound friends in Zapadi’s house that he must be leaving to find Sola. Pfeifer and Stenfalk doubt S.‘s story, but Corbeau believes.

Fn2FXC quotes VMS in a letter to Otto Grahn, but she appears to add a sentence not in the original.

Marginalia
Eric mentions Desjardins funeral and the double-talk about Moody’s reputation. He wishes everyone to say what they mean. Jen points out that both of them may not lie, but they don’t reveal the whole truth, either. Discussion about Fn2 – there is an extra sentence in Otto Grahn’s quote, leading Jen to discover the cipher clue.

133

Ship of TheseusCorbeau and S. are holding hands as they walk away from Zapadi’s house. Corbeau admits to S. that she is with Stenfalk. They worry that the diversionary fire may get out of control, since that is what fires do. Corbeau comments that Vevoda will always have the advantage because he is willing to hurt and kill people to get what he wants.

Marginalia
Jen mentions the fire that came close to her hotel. She is scared. They talk about who, if anyone, is behind it.

152

Ship of Theseus
The fugitives see smoke, a horse rider, and then realize they are being followed. They pick up the pace to the summit and wonder who is chasing them – police, detectives, vigilantes?

Marginalia
Jen realizes that four guest VIPs accessed the archives, two with Moody and Ilsa. Two others. Who are they?

171

Ship of Theseus

In the caves, Corbeau awakens S. because Stenfalk is missing. Corbeau panics, and S. confesses that it is his fault – he left the valise at the bottom of their climb and Stenfalk must have returned for it. Corbeau peers out of the cave and sees Stenfalk talking to the detectives. She panics more.

Marginalia
Jen and Eric discuss whether VMS was responsible for Ekstrom’s death after giving him anagrams at the hotel.

190

Ship of Theseus
Last appearance of Pfeifer. Last painting on the cave wall, which appears to be a pack of wolves killing something (a bird?). S. and Corbeau discover the hole that will lead them to the deepest part of the cave. S. ponders the water entering the hole.

Marginalia
Jen is paranoid someone is falling her and upset with Eric for lying “about the tunnels.” Jen asks Eric for the steam tunnel map. Eric apparently provides it and tells her not to let anyone else see it. However, the map does not appear until p306-307.

209

Ship of Theseus
S., back on the reborn ship after Corbeau’s death, is on deck. The rainstorm is over. Maelstrom is behind the wheel. The crew seems to only tolerate him. They seem more bleary-eyed and a few seem missing.

Marginalia
Jen draws the wind. Eric says in pencil S. still an outsider. Jen starts a discussion about the best job they’ve ever had. Eric mentions the planetarium. Jen mentions the library. Eric and Jen think Moody must have a copy of The Archer’s Tales at his house.

228

Ship of TheseusS. has connected with Osfour outside El H–. Osfour points out that S. has seen the Black Vine and asks if it changes the blood. Osfour says customers will prostrate themselves before Vevoda and that agents, not detectives, now work for Vevoda.

No Marginalia

247

Ship of Theseus

S. is in the store room talking to Khatef-Zelh. He has just asked about The Archer’s Tales but Khatef-Zelh says she has never heard of it. S. receives and examines the contents of his valise for the first time. He admires the pen that he will soon use to kill.

Marginalia
Is there one VMS or many? Eric points out the connection between The Painted Cave and Durand’s All of this to you I give. Night Palisades sounds like Summersby, but still there is something consistent in the Straka works. Eric says it all sounds personal, “like one person’s rage at the world and his love for the written word.”

266

Ship of Theseus

S. is on the deck with the female pouting sailor and the monkey. She seems to be trying to teach the monkey to swab the deck, but “the monkey is having none of it.” S. tries to get her to communicate with him, but she refuses.

Fn7

Speculation of who Straka modeled the pouting sailor after.

Marginalia
Older marginalia talks about wanting to meet. Newer marginalia talks about the thrill of having met. Jen says the Fn7 talk of the reincarnated-nun-Straka is fun to believe and says they should add Florence Stoneham-Smith “to our candidate-deaths-by-falling list.”

285

Ship of TheseusS. first catches sight of The Lady on top of the volcano. He sees the book “S.” for the first time.

Marginalia

Jen talks about getting a degree in library science and Eric encourages her despite her misgivings about herself. Eric comments that the lady looks like Filomela when he first met her. Eric comments that FXC has written 30 or so novels that were never published. Eric explain that FXC loves to write while listening to Carmina Burana, which Straka said “has the truest, most intense expression of passion he’d ever heard – far more so than anything he’d ever written or could ever write.” Jen comments that it feels weird to know something so concrete and specific about VMS.

304

Ship of Theseus
Agent #4 just died. Those who find the torn pages in his pocket at the train station wonder what kind of man carries such things. The bottle that contained the poison that killed him is at the bottom of a river far away, and S. is on a small boat, making his way back to his ship – making sure to keep his valise dry.

Marginalia
Jen says Vanessa saw Moody drunk in the cafe. Eric says he enjoyed the rakija on one of his trips overseas but wished he (Desjardins?) would have bought more than one bottle.

323

Ship of Theseus
Agents #9 & #41 arrive in P__ on separate trains, pouring over the S-files and planning their assassination. Twin defenestrations for certain. The “settle on narrative.” The story they choose is “so very Shakespearean.”

MarginaliaJen says a window was open when she came home, but she couldn’t close it because it reminded her of Desjardins’ death. Jen comments that her favorite class was Shakespeare through Performance. She hated acting but had to play Cordelia in King Lear. An old French woman told her to “let go.” It worked Jen liked it and that advice helped her love the class. Now she “knows her tragedies inside and out.”

361

361 = 192, and much happens on this page. It was worth an entirely separate post. It reveals clues about Desjardins, Signe Rabe, Durand, and more. We also see an interesting connection between Signe Rabe and Sobreiro.

380

Ship of TheseusIn the winter city as S. writes in the newspapers, Sola does not speak to him from the margins. Here begins the section known as torrent of words.

Marginalia
Eric’s notes are all in red. He talks about the Summersby confession and mentions details which cause Jen to write only one word: Signe?

399

Ship of TheseusS. has come to enjoy his “walk on water” away from the Winter City and back to the ship. He wishes he could do it again when it is over. The ship has an entirely new crew and there is no Maelstrom. The crew seems to respect Sola and maybe even S.

No Marginalia

418

Ship of Theseus

S. and Sola ascend to Vevoda’s chateau through the abandoned well. They discuss trust. S. feels very close to Sola here.

Fn3
There is mention of the review of The Winged Shoes of Emydio Alves by K.R. Simmons in the 1942 Portland Clarion who said it was a revelatory work of personal emotion.

Marginalia
Jen points out that though many were disloyal to S., many remained loyal. Both agree this is a new revelation. Jen says Fn3 is completely untrue and this must be another clue. Eric says he knows she will find it.

437

Ship of Theseus
Vevoda’s oldest and most trusted agent (#1?), still wearing a duster, is talking to the crowd at the Chateua. He explains that another guest has been hurt for failing to follow instructions, and that Edvar VI will be addressing the crowd in 15 minutes. The crowd grows quiet. S. offers Edvar VI a glass of the black wine.

Fn8
FXC comments that she has reconstructed Chapter 10 because of missing pages, but will not share where exactly.

Marginalia

Eric and Jen talk of Desjardins recognizing Eric’s value even from a distance. They talk about the footnote being false, but that it is a way of FXC explaining that this is how both FXC and VMS co-create their story.

456

Ship of Theseus
The last page of the book. S., who is looking through the spyglass he found hidden under the blanket where the monkey slept, sees another ship with two people at the wheel (presumably he and Sola). He can’t see exactly who, but he and Sola will let their imaginations “fill in their features.”

Go to the Territory, the Agent says. Find the governor. How surprised you’ll be.

At the morgue, when the jaws are cracked open, the coroner will discover pages 189 and 190 of Ang Mamamana Kuwento (authored by one Liwliwa Siloy) crumpled loosely into a rosette.

Eric points out that Ang Mamamana Kuwento translates to The Archer’s Tales in TAGALOG, a Philippine language. Siloy, the author’s last name, is a bird common in the Philippines according to Jen.

The page found in Agent#2’s pocket, as he dies in the car that sits directly beneath the brand new Golden Gate Bridge, has page 189 on one side and 190 on the other. One sentence prior to the page reference, we hear the dying words of Agent#2: Go to the Territory. Find the governor. How surprised you’ll be.

If we go to pages 189-190 in Ship of Theseus, we find a direct connection. Page 190 is the last time we see Pfeifer until we ourselves go to the Territory, as Agent#2 says, and experience surprise as we discover that Pfeifer is the governor.

This seems to be more than coincidental. It creates a strong connection between The Archer’s Tales by Arquimedes de Sobreiro and Ship of Theseus by V.M. Straka.

We already have other hints of this. On p150, Eric and Jen discuss…

CHECK THIS OUT: DESJARDINS TOOK ANNUAL INVENTORY OF HIS BOOKS & PUT LAST 3 YRS. IN THE PACKAGE. THE ONLY SUBTRACTION: A BOOK CALLED “L’ESSE.” IT’S THERE IN THE FIRST TWO – BUT NOT IN LAST YEAR’S.

Sobreiro?

MAYBE? MAYBE HE WAS TELLING ME IT WAS STOLEN. HE TALKED A LOT ABOUT THEFT WHEN WE WERE IN NYC. MAYBE HE WAS TESTING HOW PEOPLE WOULD REACT.

If he had the Sobreiro, where’d he get it?

MAYBE THERE’S A HINT IN THE DOCS. GOING THROUGH AGAIN.

From Signe.

WE CAN’T PROVE IT – BUT THAT HAS TO BE IT.

L’ESSE – The “S?” (I would love some help with the French here). Here again The Archer’s Tales seem to be equated with the book of “S.” And, to deepen the mystery even further, Jen thinks Desjardins’ copy must have come from Signe Rabe. The first and only time we see SIGNE RABE in print in Ship of Theseus is directly before we watch Agent#2 beneath the Golden Gate Bridge.

We also have another connection between the book of “S.” and The Archer’s Tales on p290. As S. is atop the volcano on Obsidian Island, he sits and opens a book labeled “S.” Inside are schematics of his xebec. In each schematic, lightly hidden in the shading of the hull, is the word SOBREIRO. The book labeled “S.” has SOBREIRO on every page. Is this The Archer’s Tales? Is The Lady there Signe Rabe?

And then there is the insert between p20-21: The Burning Word, which examines “the 1759 fire that destroyed San Tadeo la Tejera and one of histories most curious libraries.” In the article, there is mention of a book lost in the fire called El Libro De S (the Book of “S”) a.k.a. Los Cuentos del Arquero (Tales of the Archer).

There are many more connections.

So many questions.

I leave you with this question – perhaps you can find the connection that I can’t. In The Interlude on p308, we find the dead Agent#34 at the coroner’s office. A page from a book is in the dead man’s pocket. It is Archerin Tarinat by Jänkä Sääksi. Yet another appearance of The Archer’s Tales, this time in Finnish. The torn page contains pages 157-158. If we go to p157-158 in Ship of Theseus, we find our five fugitives (S., Corbeau, Pfeifer, Ostrero, and Stenfalk) standing before the double-quincunx crater – our first encounter with the Black Vine. We see S drag his boot through the substance, and pay for it later as the skin on three of his toes are eaten away. We see Corbeau put her finger in the substance, which later eats away the skin on it and two more.

Anyone see a connection between Agent#34 in Edinburgh on p308 and p157-158 in Ship of Theseus? Perhaps we need to do as the Detective Inspector does on p309 – hold the page up to the light and study it closely.

The definition of hell is a place where nothing connects with nothing. – T.S. Eliot

The book of “S.” is about connections. Eric and Jen connect in the margins of a dusty old library book. S. and Sola connect in Ship of Theseus. Filomena Caldeira longs to connect to V.M. Straka in person. We, the readers, are attempting to connect all of the puzzle pieces hidden within the text into a picturesque whole.

Within “S.,” however, we find forces attempting to break those connections. FXC fails to connect with VMS at the San Sebastian Hotel in Havana, Cuba. Vevoda disconnects the Zapadi Three from their community, and continues throughout the story to wield a sword of disconnection in many lives. S. is disconnected from his very self…

More than anything, he wants to see something familiar, something that connects him, however tenuously, to the world he must have known before he lost his memory, his identity, himself. (p46)

In every story, the antagonist has a specific mission. In “S.,” Vevoda’s purpose is ostensibly to grow rich by selling a new kind of weapon and to protect his interests at all costs. But the deeper story here is that Vevoda’s purpose is to sever connections.

Let’s examine some specific scenes in the book that vividly illustrate Vevoda’s ill will in this manor.

We are told in “S.” to follow the monkey. When we first see the monkey, he is connected to the organ grinder by a thin piece of rope “knotted through the organ grinder’s belt loop” (p8). The next time we see him, he is now disconnected from his master and running away from the organ owner’s dim-witted sons “trailing a rope that slaps softly over the street-stones” (p25). This happens as S. is being shanghaied – his first disconnection from Sola – and carried to a ship. His last thought before passing out is Run, monkey. Run.

In The Emersion of “S” (Chapter 3), just after the bomb has gone off on the wharf in B__, S. lies on the ground and appears to experience a flashback (p106-108). After attempting to connect on the wharf there with a girl…

They’re speaking to each other, the boy angling himself toward her, the girl taking a half-step back, keeping distance between them, which surprises S., because isn’t the point of scenes like this that the two people—two bodies, two souls—come together?”

After the failed connection, the boy despondently loads his pockets with weights and prepares to throw himself into the sea.

In Down, and Out (Chapter 5), we see Vevoda’s brown-duster detectives advancing on the fleeing party that includes S., Corbeau, Stenfalk, Ostrero, and Pfeifer. Ostrero and Stenfalk meet their demise at the hands of the detectives, and Pfeifer points out the severed connections that result…

Don’t pretend you don’t see it. She’s gone. It’s what happens. You love, then you lose, then you die. Even if you survive, you die. Think about Ostrero: couldn’t stand to be without his wife and kids. Lost his nerve. And now her. She’s not who she was this morning. Never will be. (p183)

Ostrero, while trying to reconnect with his family, is disconnected from them forever. Corbeau, upon losing her connection to her lover, Stenfalk, will never be the same.

As S., Corbeau, and Pfeifer make their way through the cave to escape the detectives, they come across the painted drawings of the K—. The drawings seem to go in chronological order as they go deeper. The story the drawings tell is one of a unified people with a strong spiritual faith. These drawings of unity and faith grow stronger and richer as the three go deeper until they climax on p184 with this drawing…

On the wall opposite him, S. notices some thing different—a set of symbols that looks like a numbering system. It’s a ledger of some sort, perhaps, fitting into the space between two figures who are both looking at it as if it were a solid thing.

Immediately following this drawing of symbols that seem to connect two people-paintings who stare directly at it, everything changes.

The walls look different now; the lines and colors are as precise as any S. has seen, but the images aren’t as dense. Fewer hands at work, perhaps—fewer people willing to walk this far into the caverns to paint. But the narrative is changing, too; the tribe seems to be splitting into factions. One group of figures is drawn carefully, lithe and graceful; the others look dashed-off, blocky and rough, with much less detail. The two groups now hunt separately. The two groups face off again and again in some sort of tribal meeting. After a while, S. notices another, more subtle difference: the bird-wolf spirits now appear only rarely, and even when they do, they are high above the human action, made small with distance.

The K— become a disconnected people – disconnected from each other and from their once spiritual journey. The paintings thin out beyond this point.

Shortly afterword, Pfeifer’s injury forces him to disconnect from the other two. He remains behind to face the detectives.

The remainder of the chapter brings the connection between S. and Corbeau into sharp focus.

After S. descends through an opening in the floor of the cave, Corbeau slips and falls, landing in his arms. At this precise moment, S. sees that familiar symbol painted on the wall of the cave. They then work together, physically tracing out an S as they navigate an S-curve and arrive at an opening in the cave high above the water.

It is here that they hold hands in a very physical connection. And when they do, Vevoda’s detectives mock this connection with the words That’s so sweet. And then, as S. and Corbeau leap from the cave with hands clasped, they are separated by death as the bullets miss S. but fail to miss Corbeau (p197).

That’s so sweet punctuates the separation that occurs even while the two fugitives remain attached in a fervent grip.

Rewind to p130-131, when S. and Corbeau first hold hands. Jen comments in the margins That’s sweet, punctuating her connection to Eric, who admits leaving an S symbol on the cafe bulletin board to say hi. And these margin notes are written as “Corbeau tightens her grip on his hand.” It is at the precise moment that S. notices his infamous symbol not only once, but twice as a mirror image, etched in a design in the shutters in the home where they have hidden.

Here the two S.’s face each other

Here we have the story of the connection between S. and Corbeau beginning with clasped hands and That’s sweet and S.‘s recognition of two S. symbols in the shutters. And their connection ends with clasped hands, That’s so sweet, and a single S. symbol on the cave wall seen moments before as S. holds Corbeau in his arms.

Throughout “S.,” Vevoda continues to break connections. His business is war – the very definition of global disconnection. And toward the end of the book, as S. himself has chosen this path of violence in retaliation against Vevoda, he sees something very important.

He is riding in a boat on his way to commit the assassination of Nemec, whom we later discover is actually Pfeifer, from the cave. As he does, he notices that Vevoda has destroyed the hills and the ancient symbols etched on their sides in order to harvest the substance of war. And one of those symbols, only partially destroyed, burns its way into S.‘s mind.

The S. itself is broken. Disconnected. Missing a piece of itself. Unrecognizable unless you already know what the whole should look like.

This is the state of S. in this moment. He, too, is broken and disconnected – missing a piece of his very self – symbolized by the death of the magpie as he runs from the palace guards.

S. remains broken and disconnected more than ever during his stay in the Winter City of Chapter 9. Here he is unable to communicate with anyone, even though they are all around him. No one can connect with anyone – it is T.S. Eliot’s very definition of hell.

The only way to restore what is broken is to find connection. S. must find Sola. He must find himself and return from his own path of violence and disconnection. This must be where the story leads us.

And it does…

If we are to find the underlying clues that lead us to the richest cache of treasure found in the book, we must make connections. It is only then that we may solve the mystery, find ourselves, unite with others, and rediscover the spiritual side of ourselves that we have lost.